Monday, November 25, 2013

Events last week in the UK, where three women were rescued from what appears to be a 30 year-long situation of forced domestic labour situation, have focused a great deal of attention on "modern-day slavery". But it is hardly a one-off. Issues of forced labour, human trafficking and modern slavery are increasingly gaining public attention. Business, however, has been slow to engage in the conversation.

Such measures are to be applauded, but there's still a long way to go in effectively combating the worst forms of human exploitation. And one crucial player that so far hasn't brought much to the party is business. Compared with many other social and environmental issues, modern slavery has not seen much enthusiastic response from the business community. Although virtually all corporate codes of conduct prohibit any kind of forced labour, the issue is rarely given any particular attention. Most businesses simply assume that it doesn't affect them. However, the torrent of news stories across various countries and industries suggests otherwise. Companies just aren't looking hard enough to find their connection to modern slavery.

David Arkless, formerly President of Corporate and Government Affairs at the global temp agency Manpower, is probably the most visible and articulate member of the business community involved in anti-slavery efforts. He said last week that he was "frustrated by the lack of involvement of corporations in efforts to ensure that their supply chains are verified against the use of abused labour and that most of the big corporations of the world have not amended both their financial, expense and human resource policies.” You can understand his frustration. Most business leaders are simply burying their heads in the sand.

This is a major stumbling block because most forms of modern slavery either involve business or affect it in some way. After all, forced labour is a particular way of doing business - a morally regnant one for sure, but a business practice all the same. Even illegal industries such as prostitution and drug cultivation, both of which have had numerous documented cases of trafficking and forced labour, rely on business principles and come into contact with legitimate businesses at some stage. The bottom line is that we have to understand modern slavery as a business if we are to make any real sense of it and take appropriate steps to prevent it.

The research base exploring the business of modern slavery is especially thin. So I was pleased last week to help launch a new report funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on the business models and supply chains found in forced labour in the UK. It was a fascinating project to be involved in, and along with my co-authors, I'm hoping that it really helps to shine a light on the economics of modern slavery in developed country contexts.

One of our main findings is that although forced labour is often described as a hidden crime, it is not as difficult to unearth as many in the UK, including businesses and government, seem to believe. As my co-author Genevieve LeBaron and I say in a recent article for The Guardian: "The problem is not so much that we cannot find forced labour; it is that either we choose not to look where it is most likely to occur or we simply misclassify those being exploited as criminals rather than victims. A new approach to detecting and enforcing forced labour is necessary. To pinpoint its occurrence we need to start by examining the forces of supply and demand."

Much still needs to be done to really understand how these economic forces lead to such extreme forms of exploitation. But the good news is that we're making good progress. The challenge will be getting legislators and business leaders alike to take our findings seriously.

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Toronto, that once sleepy capital of Canadian business, ‘New
York run by the swiss’, a city widely seen as boring and ugly (esp. compared to
its once-competitor Montréal) – has made global news: A crack smoking mayor! Match
that, London, New York or Berlin! All the mainstream media here (and globally) are pretty unanimous
in their call for Rob Ford’s resignation, or at least for him taking a break.

That in itself is a reason for suspicion. In my business ethics course this
week I had a vivid exchange with my students. We were discussing discrimination and how it is unethical to
apply criteria such as race, gender, sexual orientation, recreational habits
etc. to job qualifications and hiring. On that note, calls for Ford’s
resignation are not very convincing. After all, on many accounts, he has done a
good job as Toronto’s major. The city’s finances are healthy; public services
are running smoothly, key infrastructure projects, such as the construction of
new subway lines have finally taken off; and the major successfully tamed the
beast of an otherwise dysfunctional federal/provincial/municipal layered
bureaucracy to get even more public infrastructure projects off the ground.
This alone, in a city whose infrastructure is stuck somewhere in the 1970s, is
reasonable ground to consider him a success on his job.

Of course, there were other things in the past, where
arguably Ford violated the terms of his job. Toronto Star investigative
reporter Daniel Dale – a former student of us - digged out a number of occasions
where the mayor took advantage of his role for personal issues. But nothing
really stuck.

As much as some have made an ethical case here against the
mayor, I do not think these arguments really touch the heart of the
controversy.

Two things spring to mind to any reflective observer. First,
much of the vitriol directed at Ford in my view is just based on the persistent
WASPy (as in White Anglo Saxon Protestant) subculture of North America. Ford
likes to use recreational drugs, has all the wrong, politically incorrect friends
and, yes, is probably an alcoholic. Mind you, at least it was not about sex.
But in some ways his fate resembles the one of Bill Clinton or Elliot Spitzer:
Ford does not live up to the public morality and style, which is deemed
politically correct in Canada. It is worth noting that although possession of crack is illegal in Canada, the lack of concrete proof (in terms of physical substance) means that prosecution is unlikely. But the fact that Ford admits to it in public and simply
continues with his job just infuriates all those who either have succumbed to
this pubic consensus of stuffy morality or otherwise suppress it and live it
out in private. After all, Canada’s alcohol consumption is twice the global
average and him talking about his ‘drunken stupors’ as a regular occurrence probably
just represents an average recreational practice in this country.

Little surprise of course, that much of the hunt on Ford – representing the right wing Progressive Conservative Party – is coming from the ‘liberal’
press here. It not only shows how small ‘c’ conservative even Canada’s liberal
elites are but also reveals that all those who hated Ford as a mayor to begin
with now take whatever moral resource as their disposal to finally finish him
off.

This points to a second observation. Rob Ford epitomizes the
aches and tensions of a country which has been the most relaxed and forward
looking in terms of immigration. His constituency are the ‘905ers’ based on the
area code of Toronto’s suburbia. That is also where he is from. These are
mostly people with a first generation immigrant background coming from south
and east asia. The other lot, who hate him and are currently fanning the
flames of ousting Rob Ford are the
‘416ers’, those who live in the core downtown of Toronto. None of them voted
for Ford and they never felt represented by a fat, white, uneducated, loud
bloke from the suburbs.

Ford’s approval ratings have soared in the aftermath of him
admitting his drug use. This is no surprise. He represents people who struggle
to make ends meet; who are sick and tired of commuting to work in a city with
the longest commuting time by far; who get little kick out of taxes
being spent on things that do not relate to their everyday struggles; and who
know from their own experience that fighting your way out of, say, Bangladesh to Brampton (a 905 suburb) – yes – takes determination, hard work and not too much concern
for what their then constituency back home thought of them. Rob Ford, the small
time entrepreneur, in his stubbornness just represents them.

So what does this amount to? On day one of his election I thought Rob Ford was a disaster. Mostly
because I believe in Toronto’s potential as a great global city that deserves a
mayor of a different stature and outlook. But at the same time I also believe that a mayor has
to represent the city that voted him in. And boy, Rob Ford fits that bill. So
rather than trying to get this ugly representation of what Toronto actually
looks like out of sight, the real smart reaction to this scandal would be to
say that Rob Ford – with all his preposterous faults – is the one that the
people of Toronto chose to represent them. So lets allow him to continue to
represent us. And if we don’t like what we see - until we can vote him out - maybe we find the courage to
address the underlying issues. Rather than killing the poor guy who currently
just displays them.

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Andrew Crane [L] and Dirk Matten [R]

Welcome to the Crane and Matten blog - for informed commentary and expert analysis on the everchanging world of corporate responsibility.

We are two business school professors best known for our books and research articles on business ethics and corporate citizenship. We wrote the Crane and Matten blog from 2008-2015, offering unique insight on a range of issues from across the globe.

Andrew Craneis Professor of Business and Society in the School of Management, University of Bath.

Dirk Matten is the Hewlett Packard Chair in Corporate Social Responsibility in the Schulich School of Business, York University.